Should I plan to be a unicorn (like everybody else, and what many advisors are pushing me to do)?

(People who have alrea­dy done seve­ral exits at tens of mil­lions – you can skip this part)

If you want to make an infor­med deci­sion you should unders­tand the odds – some basic sta­tis­tical math. What mat­ters are not paper valua­tions on which money has been rai­sed, but rea­li­sed exits whe­re foun­ders and inves­tors recei­ved money back. So lets look at some exit facts:

• Median exit value in tech­no­lo­gy com­pa­nies in Nor­dics hovers around 12-15m€ (disclo­sed exits - public com­pa­nies have to disclo­se mate­rial tran­sac­tions, so lar­ger deals tend to be disclo­sed). The­re is a lar­ge num­ber of non-disclo­sed exits that are typical­ly less than this.
• In the who­le of Euro­pe the­re are only a few >250m€ tech­no­lo­gy exists eve­ry year (half a dozen or so).
• Trying to build a unicorn takes a lot of time (>10 years) and mul­tiple invest­ment rounds, resul­ting in big chan­ges on cap table. Mar­kets chan­ge, people chan­ge, pre­fe­rences chan­ge, tech­no­lo­gies change…
• The­re are hundreds of com­pa­nies who have rai­sed money at Unicorn valua­tions, but only a few which have been bought (or IPO’d) at Unicorn level
• Your odds of get­ting a Unicorn exit are much MUCH lower than your odds of hit­ting a hole in one in golf (regard­less of your HCP)
  By all means dream big and set the tar­get high, but learn to walk befo­re trying to run. How about being worth 10M first, and then deci­ding whet­her you want to rai­se the bar or not.

You don’t need to be unicorn to be a success